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2018 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

2. The Tributary-Civilizational State

verfasst von : Berhanu Abegaz

Erschienen in: A Tributary Model of State Formation

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

There are many roads to political and economic development. In the ages of European Discovery and Commerce, Afroasia was a pioneer in establishing centralized states, albeit within loosely-defined territories which were occupied by culturally kindred but diverse peoples. Post-feudal Europe was, however, the leader in forging a coherent political order—comprising territorialized states, the rule of law, and functional mechanisms of accountability. The West European order was one that successfully monopolized large-scale violence (via a salaried professional army), established robust central bureaucracies, honored the rule of law, and protected wealth creators from myriad myopic redistributors under the cloak of officeholding.

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Vorheriges Kapitel The Making of the Modern Political Order

Nächstes Kapitel The Gondarine Tributary-Military State

A fiscal-military state is used to refer to a state with a centralized bureaucracy which can impose heavy taxation and mobilize long-term debt financing of prolonged wars. An efficient fiscal-military state collects revenues by relying less on coercion than on cooperation to ensure that the productive base of the economy is not harmed. Britain and Sweden are often cited as pioneers of this model in the 17th and 18th centuries. An absolutist-military state, on the other hand, combines unchecked monarchical power with militarism and a centralized bureaucracy. The Iberian monarchs of Spain and Portugal are good examples. A “tributary-military state” is a state with a weak central bureaucracy, a small royal army, and overly dependent on tribute and militia-service obligations of its subjects. The Afroasiatic states we study here are great examples of tributary militarism.

By ‘Eurasian,’ we refer to the world of the Eastern Church which encompassed European and Neareastern regions where Orthodox Christianity and later Islam coexisted. The term ‘Afroasian’ will be used here to include northeastern Africa (mainly Egypt and Ethiopia) and the worlds of Constantinople and the Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Persia and the Mughals.

The striking similarities among Ethiopia, Eurasia, and Afroasia in nomad-settler relations, the military administration and punitive land dispossession in newly conquered lands, and the largely indirect mode of surplus and militia mobilization will be presented in the next two chapters.

By mid-1800, the archaic timar system was abolished, and the military organization was centralized and salaried. The administration of the waqf was also centralized and excess holdings transferred to the Crown. The Tanzimat (ordering) proclamation of 1839 initiated a period of reforms which climaxed with the announcement of a written constitution in 1876 as well as a parliament. Mohammad Ali, who ruled Egypt under Ottoman tutelage during the first half of the 1800s, modernized Egypt by building a hyper-militarized state, raised farm productivity, nurtured a secular civil service and the army, introducing advanced education and health services, and launching an import-substituting industrialization. His successors, especially Khedive Ismail built railway lines, harbors, bridges and the Suez Canal before the British made Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan colonies until the mid-1900s (Maddison 2007).

Although Gondar the town was exceptional in becoming a permanent capital with impressive castles, the meager surplus of the smallholder could not be supplemented by income from a good access to the global trading network (unlike the case of the Islamic empires). With a population of 60,000 in 1700, the accounts of travelers consistently suggest that Gondar was far from an urban commercial-industrial center. It was hardly comparable even to provincial towns in contemporary North Africa or the Middle East. As Gamst (1970) suggests, Ethiopia did not manage to develop the material basis for developing urban centers which could last to the present era.

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Titel: The Tributary-Civilizational State
verfasst von: Berhanu Abegaz
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: A Tributary Model of State Formation
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75779-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-75780-3

Copyright-Jahr: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75780-3_2

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